The Vučedol culture (Croatian: Vučedolska kultura) flourished between 3000 and 2200 BC[1] (the Chalcolithic period of earliest copper-smithing and arsenical bronze-smithing), centered in Syrmia and eastern Slavonia on the right bank of the Danube river, but possibly spreading throughout the Pannonian plain and western Balkans and southward.

[2] The need for copper resulted in the expansion of the Vucedol Culture from its homeland of Slavonia into the broader region of central and southeastern Europe.

The Vučedol culture at its peak completely or partially covered 14 of today’s European countries – the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania and one settlement has even been registered in Eastern Greece.

The rise of a dominant hunter-warrior class is a preview of the changes that will be characteristic for the east and middle European early Bronze Age.

The community chief was the shaman-smith, possessing the arcane knowledge of avoiding poisonous arsenic gas which is connected to the technology of coppersmithing as well as understanding the year cycle.

Still, the whole life of shaman-smith could not pass without biological consequences of chronic arsenic exposure: slow loss of body movement coordination, and at the same time, stronger sexual potency.

Three symbols of double axes and a necklace were incised on its neck with lines covering its wings and chest, and an unusual crest on the back of the head.

If the shape of the crest and carefully delineated wings and chest, prove the figure to be the domesticated dove, then it was being raised in Europe 4,500 years ago, much earlier than we commonly think.

[15] It is based on an Orion cycle, shown by precise sequence of constellations on a vessel found in an Eneolithic mound in the very center of the modern town of Vinkovci.

[Note 1] The simple explanation of the Vučedol Calendar is that each of the four lateral bands on the vessel represent the four seasons, starting with spring on the top.

The place of reference on the horizon is the point at which (in those days) the Orion's Belt disappeared from view at the end of winter, which meant the beginning of a new year.

[20] Also, marks on the foreheads of skulls were found that could be attributed to some kind of initiation in early childhood by a drop of molten copper.